Response to inquiry: Differences between heritage & non-heritage learners

[Scott McGinnis]

From: Soohee Kim, Ph.D. [mailto:soohee at u.washington.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 2:14 AM


Dear Dr. Kim,

My input is based on my experience of teaching Korean heritage learners
in the Greater Seattle area.  I have observed that Korean heritage
learners tend to challenge themselves less than novice learners thus
come out learning less than their counterparts (e.g. After several terms
of grammar and spelling lessons, many heritage learners do not
successfully learn how to spell).  There seem to be at least two aspects
worth looking into if your research focus happens to be or include
Korean heritage learners.

1. Motivation factor: Many Korean heritage learners choose to take a
Korean class because of their parents' wishes (culturally interesting
point, I think). 2. Unlearning is more difficult than learning new
materials: Most Korean heritage learners are familiar with the Korean
phonetic alphabet system and are under the mistaken assumption that the
writing system is also phonetic. After years of practice, unlearning the
incorrect spelling habit seems to be quite a challenge to them. (Most
novice learners have little trouble learning words with correct
spelling).

Lack of appropriate teaching materials for Korean heritage learners
(especially intermediate to advanced levels) is of course another big
challenge.

I am putting in my two-bits, hoping that you will consider these
possibly compounding factors into your linguistic/psycho-linguistic
research.

Cheers,

Soohee Kim, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Korean
University of Washington
http://www.washington.edu/koreanlg


> Hello,
>
> I'm interested in looking into cognitive/ lingusitic differences of
> heritage learners in comparison to non-heritage learners and other
learners.
>
> I was wondering if there are any (empirical) studies done in the
literature
> on linguistic characteristics, cognitive styles (psycholinguistic),
> and/or aptitude of heritage learners?
>
> I would appreciate any suggestions for direction.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Hi-Sun Helen Kim
> University of Hawaii at Manoa
> Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature
> Korean Linguistics (Ph.D.)